Q: I'm looking into purchasing
a new Socket 775 motherboard, but I'm doing so on a budget. I've been
looking at several models from various manufacturers and comparing their
features. Your recent reviews have helped this process a lot, but
there's one thing I'm still confused on. What's an audio Codec? I
know it enables onboard sound, but I've seen a few of your reviews where you
state that the motherboard has a hardware soundcard integrated... Is this
better? I don't want to buy a separate soundcard, since I'm not an
audiophile, but I remember how horrible integrated sound was on motherboards a
few years back. Can you shed a little light on this?

A: The only real difference between integrated sound based on an audio codec
like AC'97 and 'full' integrated sound solutions is the presence of a DSP
(Digital Signal Processor) to process digital sound outside the processor
itself. Full hardware implementations are essentially a soundcard on a
chip, and contain everything necessary to process and convert digital signals to
analog for output to speakers. Audio codecs like AC'97 are integrated with
the chipset and the processor itself, and contain only the hardware necessary to
convert and output a digital signal. Any signal processing must be done by
the processor and chipset. As you'd expect, this places a slight overhead
on your system, so using integrated audio while playing games, for example, can
slightly compromise performance. Also, some advanced audio effects are
specific to certain company's DSP hardware and cannot be emulated by an audio
codec. For every day use such as playing MP3 music files, there is no real
difference between codec-based audio and full hardware solutions.